Page 36 of Fuse

“I know.” My voice shreds, but I suck my shit together, summoning the fortitude to add, “I know, man.” And I really do. He never would have consented to be inked with the symbol of the cocksuckers partly responsible for Mitch’s death.

With a crazy burst of force, the guy clutches me by one knee. “And I— I d-d-didn’t tell them anything, Reece. A-About the ridge.” He sucks in shallow spurts of air through his gritted teeth. “I d-d-didn’t betray you…or th-the team. Everyone is safe.”

I’m suddenly fucking glad he’s made me look. That despite his agony—the suffering I’m inflicting—my gaze is soldered on him and my soul is able to confirm his absolute truth. Only after my tsunami of relief fades can I plug into enough brain cells to form new words. “But…how?” I blurt at last.

“Tr-Trick I l-l-learned…in spec ops,” he explains. “Forced m-myself to remember the location d-d-differently. If the bitch d-did yank it out of me, sh-she’ll be ch-chasing you s-s-somewhere out n-n-near Ojai and Lake Casitas.”

I shake my head, fighting another flood of astonishment and guilt. Fuck, the guilt. “And you’re still really asking me to repay you like this?”

Unbelievably, he digs his hand harder into my knee. “I’m asking you t-t-to h-h-help me with what I’ve d-d-dreamed of since Paris.”

I drop my head all the way down. I’ve never felt more like a privileged punk who got away with everything short of murder growing up, only to be grown-up but still prancing around like a fool, taking out bad guys with the same disconnected ease with which I spiked the principal’s thermos with laxatives or charmed cheerleaders out of their panties. And I’ve been doing it while readily thinking the superhero antics have been my grand installment pay-off plan to karma.

But everything’s changed, damn it. The stakes have climbed terrifyingly high. Friends. Family. The cause I realize I’ve been called to. The woman I’ve been destined for. The choices I’ve had to make with every one of those weights on my soul. Dealing with the consequences. Living with the consequences.

So goddamned unsure about whether I can live with this one.

“Kane. Fuck. Don’t put this on me.” Air slices in and out of my lungs, harsh and heavy, as if making up for every one I’m taking from him. “I’m begging you…”

“I-I’m begging h-harder.”

Shit. We sound like a couple of teenagers messing around with each other in the schoolyard, comparing our piss streams, except there’s nothing juvenile about what he’s asking of me. “We’ll…we’ll find another way to get you away from her, okay? If you and I learned about this trick by accident, there have to be some more loopholes around her shit. We can block the signals somehow. Wade and Fersh can make you a helmet or ear plugs. Maybe there are liquid firewalls we can formulate. We can inject you… Fuck. Listen to me. Kane.”

“No.”

“The guys—Wade, Fersh, Alex—have amassed a lot of data about those fuckers.” Not the exact information I’ve been looking for but a lot we never knew all the same. “Just listen to what they have to—”

“No.”

I shove up, resulting in my hand plunging harder on his windpipe. “Just like that? No?”

“Not j-j-just like that.” His gaze alters, darkening to the texture of twin onyx chunks. Glittering. Impenetrable. “Not just like that, and you kn-know it.”

I lock my teeth. Another roar brews in my gut, as dark as the smoke turning the sun into a ball of burnt oil, but it lodges in my throat like a rag in that oil, soaked in the awful awareness of what he’s implying. But I have to hear it for myself, perhaps because I still don’t believe it for myself.

“How many times, Kane?” I lean over him, hyper-alert to how he frantically glances to the side. I twist my free hand into the collar of his fatigues. “How many times have you already tried to kill yourself, damn it?”

His breathing gets shallower. His eyes tighten at the corners. “F-F-Five.”

I release his collar. “Five?”

“T-Twice in Paris,” he rasps. “Three more times in Sp-Spain before those f-f-fuckers f-f-finally came for me.”

He finishes by scrabbling his grip up to my waist, causing his jacket sleeve to hitch back.

Revealing the scabbed-over gashes in his wrist.

Fucking. Shit.

I lock my teeth and curl my lips, readying to spit the same words, but the bastard blurts out, “You…you see now? I…I d-d-don’t want firewalls or magic helmets or f-f-fixes.” As he rummages his hand back to my wrist, I once again have to confront the black ink along his knuckles. Brandings he never asked for. A fate he never deserved. “I…I just want to be with Mitch again.”

A love he knows only I will understand.

Because I do.

Because if it were me having to live with the memory of Emma falling to her death, could I stand to confront another sunrise or sunset?

If my plan to avenge her death wound up in becoming Faline Garand’s remote-controlled hit man, would I want to take one more step? Even one more mortal breath?